Greens On Board With Rail to the Shore

Yesterday the Greens demonstrated their support for North Shore rail with Julie-Anne Genter hosting a media event at Takapuna.

“The Green Party is calling on the Government to make rail the priority for Auckland’s second harbour crossing,” said Green Party transport spokesperson Julie Anne Genter.

“Building a rail line is the most cost-effective, sensible way to help more people travel to and from the Shore and avoid congestion.

It’s great that the Greens are formally on board. It would be even better to have the other political parties as well. It should be every politician’s ideal that we move people efficiently around Auckland. It should be every politician’s ideal to support transport projects that offer the most capacity at peak times. It should be every political party’s ideal to support transport projects that lower carbon emissions and contribute to the goals that our country signed up to in Paris. It should be every political party’s ideal to support transport projects that make economic sense, and to stop projects that don’t make any sense whatsoever.

The NZTA tell us that they are working together with Auckland Transport to ensure a future crossing will include road and public transport. They insist that this will ensure the road designation enables and is fully integrated with a future public transport. But we’ve heard this before when the second Manukau Harbour crossing was built. Mangere is still waiting for rapid transit, in spite of us going out and getting more than 10,000 signatures in support of rail to the airport. So South Auckland has lost out, and North Shore could be the next area of Auckland to lose out too.